Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics: Parenting
50 - Parental Mental Health and Reading to Infants during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Population-Level Data from the Pittsburgh Study
Saturday, April 23, 2022
3:30 PM – 6:00 PM US MT
Poster Number: 50 Publication Number: 50.203
Erin Roby, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States; Chelsea M. Weaver Krug, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States; Sonia N. Rowley, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States; Luciano G. Dolcini-Catania, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Psychology, Pittsburgh, PA, United States; Alan L. Mendelsohn, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States; Daniel S. Shaw, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Research Scientist New York University Grossman School of Medicine New York, New York, United States
Background: Cognitively stimulating parent-child interactions such as reading aloud support child development and school readiness and mediate the impact of poverty on these outcomes beginning in infancy. However, limited work has explored variation in and predictors of reading on a population-level. This is particularly true in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is likely to exacerbate pre-existing stressors, such as parental mental health, that are barriers to reading aloud.
Objective: 1. To describe variation in infants’ exposure to reading aloud in a racially and socioeconomically diverse population-level sample. 2. To determine associations between parental mental health and reading aloud during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/Methods: Data collection: August 2020 through present. Participants (Table1): 192 parent-infant dyads enrolled in The Pittsburgh Study’s Early Childhood Collaborative, a population-level community-partnered implementation trial of parenting interventions tailored to family strengths/risks. Predictors: parental mental health (anxiety: GAD-7; depression: CES-D) were assessed at enrollment. Outcome: Parent-child reading was assessed 6 months later using the StimQ2 (self report) READ scale, including 3 sub-dimensions: reading quantity, reading quality, and of diversity of book reading concepts/content.
Results: There was considerable variability in parents’ use of cognitively stimulating reading activities. Scores were relatively normally distributed overall and across the 3 sub-dimensions (Figure1). Partial correlations controlling for child age showed that parents’ overall STIMQ READ scores were negatively related to parents’ later anxiety and depression, and positively associated with parent age and education, as well as other demographic factors (Table 2). Conclusion(s): These findings document population-level cognitively stimulating reading activities for infants in a socioeconomically and racially diverse sample and identify key variables that contribute to parents’ reading behaviors in the context of COVID-19, including indicators of parent mental health. Findings broadly inform interventions seeking to support early cognitive stimulation and reading, such as Reach Out and Read, Video Interaction Project and Smart Beginnings. Table 1 Table 2